Did you know that ranking on the first page of Google guarantees 95% organic website traffic? If your website is not ranking on Google first page, then you are losing traffic and visibility. How can websites go about improving their SEO rankings?

What is SEO?

SEO is defined as the process of ranking website on search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo to get massive organic traffic.

What Does Google’s Algorithm look for in a Website?

It’s hard to say for certain because Google changes its algorithms daily. What is known comes for updates where the company announces a major change. In 2015, Google stated they would favor companies that had mobile-friendly pages, for example.

In 2014, Google announced the release of its Pigeon algorithm that would integrate local search results. The 2013 release of Hummingbird shifted things towards natural language queries that put context over word choice. This means that Google would focus more on long-tailed keywords. Based on these known changes to the Google rankings algorithm, it is possible to implement white hat strategies that will boost the search engine ranking of a website.

Better Content Means Better Rank

One thing Google has made clear is it expects websites to provide informative and quality content. Their documentation style guide provides some details on what they consider quality content:

• Focused conversational tone, simple to understand

• Knowledgeable information that targets the audience

• Standard American spelling, grammar, and punctuation

• Outbound links to other quality sites

Focus on Keyword Phrases

The update to Hummingbird showed that long-tail keywords improve SEO. Instead of “printer”, go for “printers in Houston” or “Seattle print services.” Don’t be afraid to add some adjectives to your key phrases: “best print service in Houston.”

Although keywords are essential, they should not trump good writing. Put them in so they sound natural and improve the word flow. Keep in mind your audience is the user, not the search engine.

Be smart when it comes to keywords, too. Consider them seasoning for your pages — a little goes a long way. A few sprinkled throughout the text helps Google find your page. Too much, though, is a black hat technique called keyword stuffing and it will lower your ranking.

You can tuck keywords into critical areas on the page for an added benefit such as the:

• URL of the page

• Page title

• In the page headings

• Use them as anchors for links to other pages

Add style elements to them occasionally, as well, like bold or italics.

Be Consistent With Updates

A website left to die will do just that — die somewhere back on page 20 in the search results. Post new, fresh content regularly.

Embrace Responsive Design

The last Google update stated that mobile-friendly websites are of topmost priority.

It makes sense when you consider that 70 percent of internet traffic is mobile.

A website that isn’t mobile-friendly loses in two ways:

• Google de-ranks them

• Visitors pass them by if the page won’t open on their smartphones.

Responsive design means that web pages can be opened on different kinds of devices like laptops, desktops, tablets and mobile phones.

The most effective way to improve traffic on your website is to show up on that first page of a Google search. To do that, you must properly optimize your pages using white hat SEO practices.

Contact 299 SEO to help optimize your website to improve visibility. Get in touch with us today!